## Set operations in Perl

Assume we use arrays as set:

my @odds = (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25);
my @primes = (2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23);

then we can do the following set operations as one-liners:

Check membership:

my $OddsHasTwo = scalar(grep{$_ == 2}@odds);

Find unique members:
perl
my @uniq = sort {$a<=>$b} keys %[map{$_=>1}@primes}]; Union: perl my @union = sort {$a<=>$b} keys %[map{$_=>1}(@odds,@primes)}];

Intersection:
perl
my @inter = grep {my $i=$_;scalar(grep{$_==$i}@primes)} @odds;

Difference: (@odds - @primes)
perl
my @diff = grep {my $i=$_;scalar(grep{$_==$i}@primes)==0} @odds;

## Print a 2-D array using map command

perl

push(@a,[1,2,3]);
push(@a,[2,4,6]);
push(@a,[3,6,9]);
print join("\n",map{ join("", map {sprintf("%3d",$_)} @$_) } @a)."\n";

output:

1  2  3
2  4  6
3  6  9

## Summation

Any of the below prints “6”:

echo -e '1\n2\n3' | perl -e 'map{$x+=$_}<>;print $x;' echo -e '1\n2\n3' | perl -e 'while(<>){$x+=$_};print$x;'
echo -e '1\n2\n3' | perl -e 'print((map{$x+=$_}<>)[-1]);'
echo -e '1\n2\n3' | perl -ne '$x+=$_;END{print $x};' ## Indenting here documents ($blah = <<'    ENDHEREDOC') =~ s/^ {8}//gm;
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah
ENDHEREDOC

also, it is better to quote the here document tags, so that you can have a semicolon:

$blah = <<'ENDHEREDOC'; blah blah blah ENDHEREDOC # Get a piece of text from a matching In other words, get something from a pattern without using substitution: ($piece = $whole) =~ (/regex(piece)/)[0]; ## Removing consecutive, duplicated characters That is, to make heello to become helo: s/(.)\1/\1/g; or tr///cs; The s line is trival. The tr line means to have everything (the complement c of nothing <nowiki>//</nowiki>) and its consecutives to replace by itself. ## Converting every word into first-letter uppercase Such As This One s/(\w+)/\u\L$1/g;

The \u and \L are modifiers to make the next character(s) to be upper or lower cases.

## Capturing nested parenthesis

Such as capturing the while function call to foo() in foo(a+(b+c)+(d+(e+f)))+g+(h+i). The following piece of code is from “Mastering Regular Expression” by Friedl.

my $string = "foo(a+(b+c)+(d+(e+f)))+g+(h+i)"; my$nest;
$nest = qr/$$( [^()] | (??{nest}) )*$$/x;$string =~ m/(foo$nest)/; print "Function call is$1\n";

The (??{code}) construct is used to embed a piece of code into a regex, which a nesting is done.

## Separating CSV data

Where the CSV data may include commas inside a pair of quote and quotes may be escaped inside quotes. The following piece of code is from “Mastering Regular Expression” by Friedl.

@new = ();
push(@new, $+) while$text =~ m{
"([^\"\\]*(?:\\.[^\"\\]*)*)",?  # groups the phrase inside the quotes
| ([^,]+),?
| ,
}gx;
push(@new, undef) if substr($text,-1,1) eq ','; ## Schwartzian Transform A way to speed up the sorting process by Randal L Schwartz: @sorted = map {$_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] cmp$b->[1] }
map  { [ $_, foo($_) ] } @data;

The above is to get a bunch of items from @data, and construct a temporary 2-column array for sorting (i.e. calling foo() for N times only). Then sort the 2-column array according to the string order of the 2nd column, and then extract the first column as the sorted result.

## Opening a really temporary file

Passing undef as filename:

open my $tmp, '+>', undef or die$!;

or you can open a temporary file at RAM if you’re using Perl 5.8+:

open(my $wr, '>', \$string) or die "Couldn't write to string";
open(my $rd, '<', \$string) or die "Couldn't read string";